Most everyone is well acquainted with the standard telephone answering machine. Such a machine is hooked up to a telephone and by means of a tape recorder device and magnetic tape it records oral messages from the caller. While such a machine has the advantage of allowing the user to receive messages when he is not present and cannot answer the phone, it has several disadvantages: (1) Such an answering machine may be large, usually larger than the phone itself. (2) Because of its large size, it cannot be built into the standard size telephone and must remain as a separate unit. (3) The owner of the machine must play back several minutes of tape, sometimes with periods of silence in between messages to search for recorded messages. (4) The caller must speak his name, phone number, etc. into his phone in order for the message to be transmitted through the phone system and recorded on the answering machine on the other end of the line. Since many callers feel uncomfortable speaking to machines, some callers don't leave messages and merely hang up the phone. (5) An additional inconvenience occurs when the user wishes to retrieve stored messages by phone. He must on occasion wait for minutes for all recorded messages to be played and must copy with pen and paper in order to have a hard copy.